Computer automation has found its way into every facet of data processing including telephone call processing systems. For example, since the 1980's, telephone call centers have employed automated systems to increase call center efficiency. Such automated systems include automated call placement systems and automatic call distribution (ACD) systems, which were developed to handle inbound and outbound calls more efficiently and to replace banks of multi-button telephony sets and randomly-handled calls. As call volumes increased, voice response units (VRU) were developed to enable customers using touch-tone telephones to directly interact a call center's host computer.
Predictive dialers were developed to automate outbound calling functions. Predictive dialers increased productivity by more than three hundred percent over manual dialing operations by automatically screening out all “no answers”, busy signals, and answering machines, and only presented call center agents with live voices.
Accordingly, it is now common for organizations who must make and handle large numbers of telephone calls with their customers, such as banks, credit card handling companies and telemarketers, to utilize computerized telephony systems which receive lists of calls to be placed containing customer account information including a telephone number, and which organize, prioritize and control the calling of each customer account in the list.
Although such existing telephony systems vary extensively, most systems are capable of receiving call records, organizing them into groups or lists, often prioritizing or ordering the call records within the groups, and providing the call records to a telephone dialing mechanism to be called and subsequently connected to an agent who will handle the call. Along with the prior arts systems, however, come several drawbacks. The first drawback relates to the fact that once a call group or list has been established, many systems are incapable of “adding” to the group dynamically, based on some recent event. In addition, most systems are also not capable of dynamically altering the priority of any given call record within a group once it has been downloaded or prepared for download to the telephone call record processing system. Such a feature is often an important consideration for certain telephone related applications.
For example, credit card processing organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the marked rise in fraudulent use of credit cards. Since in many occasions any financial losses from fraudulent use of credit cards may rest on the credit card issuer, the issuer has a significant vested interest in and a strong desire to detect fraudulent use of credit cards and most importantly would like to detect even the potential fraudulent use of a credit card as early as possible, in order to minimize losses.
Accordingly, the credit card processing industry has developed a series of “tests” which are applied to credit card usage in an effort to attempt to determine whether a particular credit card is potentially being used fraudulently. For example, one such test includes monitoring the period of time between the date of last use of a credit card and multiple current uses of a credit card. Statistics have shown that if a credit card is not used for an extended period of time and all of a sudden the card is used extensively in a short period of time, chances are that the card has been stolen and is being used fraudulently.
Another test or indicator is the amount or value of the charged transaction. Credit card processors can establish profiles of credit cards users including the average charge amount over a period of time and, if a charge amount is received which exceeds this average amount, a potential exists for fraudulent credit card usage.
In certain circumstances, some credit card processors even assign a numerical “score” value to a customer's account which “score” reflects the relative potential for the existence of fraudulent use of the credit card. As an example, a “score” value of “1” (one) may indicate only a small potential or likelihood for fraudulent usage while a “score” of “10” (ten) in association with a customer's account may indicate a very high probability of fraudulent usage.
In the past, credit card processing organizations have been able to provide groups of customer account records which have been identified as having a potential for fraudulent usage, and have been able to assign such groups to an automated telephone call record processing system for dialing at a later time. Given the real-time access to credit card activity which credit card processors now have, it is therefore often possible to spot potential credit card fraud in a short period of time. Therefore, a customer account which has received a low score in terms of probability of fraud during a call record download based on a prior day credit card activities may receive a very high score for probability of fraudulent credit card usage during the present day as credit card transactions are received by the credit card processor.
Given the present limitations in call record processing systems, however, is not possible, in real time, to update an existing customer account call record “score” in a previously downloaded call record list or group to indicate that the relative probability of fraudulent credit card usage has “jumped” from a lower value to a higher value, and to therefore to schedule the call the customer immediately or at least sooner than previously scheduled to verify whether or not the card has been stolen.
In the case of many prior art systems, this information will not be downloaded to the call record processing system until the next day, when it may be too late to determine that a credit card has been lost or stolen and to prevent further usage. Similarly, credit card processing activities may, during the middle of the day, indicate potential fraudulent use of a credit card and in this situation, it would also be desirable to immediately add this call record to the list of call records to be processed for that day so that the customer may be immediately called. Additionally, the owner of the card may telephone in to report the loss of the credit card and therefore, it is not necessary to telephone him or her. This customer's name may therefore be immediately removed from the call list.
Accordingly, systems and methods have been developed, such as the one disclosed in the Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 5,832,068, which is fully incorporated herein by reference, that provide a data processing system with real time data record updating and dynamic data record exclusion. The dynamic data record excluder of '068 patent includes a unique data record identifier generator, responsive to at least one received data record, for generating a unique data record identifier. A data record index stores at least a portion of the received data record and the generated unique data record identifier. Unique data record identifiers may be based on one or more of various data record processing elements such as time, date, time of record download, customer account number, download cycle, or data record batch number.
In addition, where the processing system maintains a single “version” or location in which all data records are stored, the received data records may be compared against previously received data records to determine whether or not the same or previous version of the received data record was previously received, in which case the previous version is excluded and the new version is retained to be processed presently or at a later time.
Such a dynamic data record excluder determines whether the received data record was previously received by comparing at least a portion of the received data record with data stored in the data record index. If a data record referencing the same account number was previously received, the previously received data record is discarded, marked “to be excluded” and/or a data record exclusion indicator is generated, and only the newest record will be processed. A data record exclusion list is maintained in response to the dynamic data record excluder, for storing the generated data record exclusion indicators or the list of data records to be excluded from processing.
However, the widespread use of computer networks has added another layer of complexity to record exclusion systems. Today, may companies and organizations utilize more that one call center, each having its own computer telephony integration (CTI) system for placing and receiving calls. While distributing call center operations does provide certain advantages to a company, it also provides a significant disadvantage with respect to call record exclusion namely, an exclusion record generated by one CTI system is not shared with the other distributed call center CTI systems. Accordingly if a customer places an inbound call, which is handled by a first call center and which results in the generation of an exclusion record by that call center's CTI system, the customer may still be called if the customer is the subject of a call record slated for dialing by a dialer included in a CTI system at another of the distributed call centers. Therefore, the customer may still be called. This will result in unnecessary telephone line costs and will reduce call center productivity.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method of propagating exclusion or priority records between a plurality of distributed, networked CTI systems so that an exclusion record or a priority call record generated by one of the CTI systems is provided to the remaining networked, distributed call centers. In this manner, a generated exclusion record or priority call record will be more likely to result in the exclusion or prioritization of a specified call record by all of the networked call centers.